Petrus Hofstede was a Dutch Reformed minister at Anjum 1739, Steenwijk 1743, Oost-Zaandam 1745, and Rotterdam 1749-1770. He was an intolerant and fanatical man, one of the last Calvinists in the Netherlands to attack the Mennonites in his writings, particularly Johannes Stinstra,preacher of Harlingen, Friesland, in his poem (1742), De Waarheid in Friesland tegen de aanslagen der ketterij verdedgt. In 1781 in a booklet against F. G. C. Rütz, the Lutheran minister of The Hague, he again attacked Stinstra.